It is used haedjoint, and my headjoint is very loose when I put on silver flute body, so I really don't know what happen in the past...maybe as you said the tenon has been resized several times.
Also do you mean it will be really costly to repair the crack? |
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This head piece does look like it's been re-sized some. The tenon area appears to have been sanded to fit a slightly smaller sized bore. (I'm making an assumption based upon your second photo) You are also saying that it is loose on your body. It doesn't show any slide/scrape marks from it being of proper fit to the body after it has been possibly "sanded". Some fitting tools roll the head piece tube to make it wider bot another style tool simply stretches the metal and this
possibly can cause a split like what you have. since it's a used head there is no way of knowing what happened in the past like you've written. So, it may very well be that the crack happened as a result of some seller trying to fit the head piece to a larger bore and in this case you may have no recourse but to get a repair done.
I would not assume that the shipping cost to Brannen (and back to you also) would be excessive but you have not stated your actual location so that we here can get an idea of distance. I would check into this or have a more local quality repair tech try to do something of a fix for you. I'd like to stress a quality technician. Someone who works on more professional flutes.
I'd have to say though that Brannen's response seemed reasonable, honest and correct as far as their situation goes. This crack would probably not have an effect on the tone quality but if the head is loose, that looseness
could have an effect. Their technician would have to take a better look at the whole head piece, determine how much work and time it would involve and then send you a pre-estimate that you can either agree to or decline. As a matter of fact, if you wanted the head joint fit to be correct, I'd suggest that you ship the body as well and ask them to do a proper fit. It may be that the best repair would be a silver solder of the crack and then a plating of the area with the same gold formula but this is up to you and to Brannen's workers. This repair may cost a bit of money but the amount would be small compared to buying a brand new similar head piece.
